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My mind spins in confusion as I try to envision Pete in scrubs and taking care of my big bad fighter in a ward. I just didn’t see this one coming. At all. The image is so incongruent I have trouble holding it in my head. “You were with him at the ward?” Okay, I know I sound stupid, but that’s all I seem to be able to ask.
Pete’s lips clench tightly as he nods. “It pissed me off.” He scowls darkly at his coffee, then shakes his head. “He’s a good dude. A little reckless but it’s Not. His. Fault! He never picked on anyone. He was as closed off as a damned wall, that kid. He just ran like hell out in the yard and did his pull-ups on a tree outside, all day wearing his headphones and blocking everything out. They had him all drugged ever since one time he got speedy and told everyone they should escape. They all followed, and there was a big mess, and from then on, no one would even give him a chance to get speedy again, they just kept shooting shit up his veins and sparing themselves the trouble.”
“My god.” The shock, horror, and anger I feel sweep over me like a sickness, and I can barely swallow the sip of coffee I have in my mouth.
“Remy’s not crazy, Brooke,” Pete emphasizes, “but they treated him like he was. Even his parents. All he had in terms of comfort those years was his damn headphones. Which is why the guy rarely expresses himself. He just can’t. He’s been too closed off for years.”
With a heart that’s just melting for him, I realize that since the beginning, Remy has opened up to me through music, which is something that seems familiar and comforting to him, and suddenly, vividly, I want to hear each one of the songs he’s played me all over again.
My eyes sting a little, and I lower my head so Pete doesn’t see that I’m touched beyond words. Remy is a quiet man. He’s a physical man and yields to his physical instincts, but I don’t think he even knows how to verbalize his emotions very well.
I wonder if I’m a little closed off, like Remy too?
In my life, I’ve frequently counted on Melanie to say things that I want to but feel shy or embarrassed to admit out in the open. I never even told anyone after my ACL tore that it sucked.
Remy’s so different from me, and yet we’re so alike I swear I can understand this man in my soul.
Suddenly I have to fight the impulse to get on my feet, go back to bed, and curl up with him.
“Was the night at the hotel … when you shot him with something … what was that?”
“An episode. It’s not really another personality like people think. Well, it is, in part, but it’s more like a mood. It’s an alternate gene expression, conflicting with his previous one. Some external trigger usually shuts down a gene expression, and another becomes expressed, which shifts his mood dramatically.” Pete meets my gaze with his warm, worried brown eyes, his features twisting in pain. “He suffers greatly, Brooke. Because he doesn’t remember what he does when he goes manic.”
I’m flashed back to all those nights he came for me in my room, with those darkened eyes, and kissed me senseless until morning. “But he told me remembered some things?” I say hopefully.
“Sometimes he does, but sometimes he doesn’t. The point is, he can’t trust himself to know for sure what he did when he was black.”
Which is why he’s been trying to be so careful with me…
My insides go mushy all over.
“So who told Riley, then?”
“I told Riley. I had to hire an extra so I could take a day off. Otherwise I’d come back and Rem would’ve gotten himself in shitloads of trouble. Coach also knows about it, of course, and Diane suspects something is up, but she doesn’t know the actual term of what he has. She just think he’s moody.”
Sighing at that, Pete pours himself some more coffee. “I helped him sign off the ward the moment he could. I’d just quit, and he told me he wanted to go see his parents, and he’d pay me if I gave him a lift. So I agreed.” Anger slashes across Pete’s face as he returns to his seat. “But the parents wanted nothing to do with him. They were scared at the mere sight of him. Shit, you should’ve seen the drama. The mother started crying, the father told Rem they wanted to live in peace, and Rem just stood there. I could see him struggling for words. I don’t know if he wanted to beg them for a chance or not, but he didn’t say anything. They all but slammed the door in his face. So we left, and Remy started fighting for money. He was so good, so he got into pro boxing and hired me full time as his assistant. He got a house in Austin and took another shot with the folks, and when at last his parents seemed to be pleased with his growing fame, they invited him to dinner. But it was the weekend the competition provoked him, and they hired some ass**le to follow him out of a match. Remy has a short fuse even when he’s in a normal mood.”
My coffee has grown cold, so I also go and fix myself a new one as I process all of this. Pete continues when he watches me sit down.
“So he got kicked out, and the parents never showed up at the restaurant.” He sighs while I sit here, both of us sad and hurting for Remy, then he adds, “It doesn’t sound much, what he told you, Brooke. But living with it can get difficult.”
His eyes bore into the top of my head, and I know he’s gauging me. I can feel the question in his eyes almost as if he’d spoken it. He’s worried about me leaving Remington. And I don’t know what guarantee I can give anyone, especially when I have no idea what to expect from his bipolar-ness. But I know I want to stay. I really do.
“He tried to go to college too,” Pete offers. “But he couldn’t finish a degree, was always getting into fights. With any provocation, the guy charges, and he kept introducing his knuckles to anyone at school he thought deserved it.”
“Was that where he met Riley?”
“Not on the other side of his knuckles, no.” He laughs, his eyes sparkling for a moment. “Rem actually stood up for Riley. Riley wasn’t the charming young man you see now when he was in college.” He winks playfully. “He was like me. Both geeks, I tell you. Neither of us were all that cool. But Remy was the coolest bad boy ever. Everyone wanted a piece of him, especially the women. He’d get them all over him, all day, and even the guys would follow, especially when he’s getting high. Excesses abound when he’s in his beginning black days. Alcohol, women, adrenaline, adventure.”
“He was actually under intense scrutiny all those years at the psych ward because of the eye color change,” he adds. “It’s not uncommon for BPs to have it, but it’s rare. Two conflicting gene expressions, and varying when one is triggered and the other is shut down. We have cocky, confident Remy, and black Remy. Black Remy still has a good heart, but he’s not reasonable. He’s not mean and certainly not evil. But he’s unpredictable and violent, and tends to destroy things, even himself. He flies high and then crashes low. This time you saw his low, it wasn’t nearly as bad as his other lows. Somehow Riley and I felt maybe it was because you kept him interested. He seemed to want to see you and kept coming out at least for that.”
“Pete, how can I help him?” I ask helplessly, pushing my coffee aside and giving him my full attention. “Please tell me how to help him, I get sick thinking of you using that stupid shit you shoot up his veins again.”
He sighs and tugs on his perfect black tie, loosening it a little. “I just don’t know with you, Brooke, but I know you’re a game changer. He’s never gone after someone the way he went after you, but even then, I can’t stop using it. Remy … his whole life is waiting for the other shoe to drop. You have to understand what it’s like that his normal side sometimes doesn’t remember what the black one does. There have been instances when police come knocking to his door, telling him he just broke into a liquor store and robbed it, and he’d be, “No f**king way I’ve been in bed all night,” and they go, “Sir, the liquor is still in your car.”
“Seriously?” I blink at that.
He nods somberly. “He fears he’s going to get black, then wake up blue and you will be gone. Because he did something to hurt you.”
I think of how important my contract of three months working for him had seemed. And remember the night he went crazy, yelling at Pete and Riley where the f**k I was, and what had they told me about him?
Somehow the realization makes me feel warm and claimed once more.
“Everything bad happens to Remington when he’s black,” Pete adds with a clatter of his empty coffee. “He wakes up and finds he was kicked out of boxing. Last time he bet all his money and woke up to find that if he loses this season, he’ll end up with very little to stand on. Riley and I try to get him in control, but he’s a handful. He’s too strong and too damn stubborn. And now, there’s you. I don’t know if you’re good for him, or the worst kind of Achilles’ heel there is to him. But it’s not our choice, is it? Remington wants you.”
Pete’s words roll inside my head as I stare off into the peach-colored hotel wallpaper. It’s taking me time to absorb all of this information. I don’t know what it is to love someone like this. My life in Seattle awaits … Melanie … my parents. I’ve got at least one more month, and I want to spend every second I can with him. I just love him more with every bit that I learn. He’s complicated and complex, a labyrinth I want to lose myself in. He’s my fighter, and I really want to fight to be with him.
